Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 1.djvu/283

 US. I. APR. 2, 1910.]

NOTES AND QUERIES.

275

' DEIL STICK THE MINISTER ' (11 S. i. 149). The tune ' Deil stick the Minister ' is the old air of an old and rather licentious song, beginning,

If ye kiss my wife, I'll tell the minister.

The lines are unfit for publication. The music, set to different words, is inserted in Oswald's ' Caledonian Pocket Companion/ Book VII., printed circa 1743. In ' Lyric Poetry and Music of Scotland,' 1853, Sten- house says :

" There is a set of the tune of ' Deil stick the Minister ' inserted in Fraser's Gaelic airs, under the title of ' Sean Truid's Uillachan,' printed in 1816, and the editor, in a note, informs us that the tune ' is the modelling of Mr. Campbell of Budyet and other Nairnshire gentlemen. The air is of considerable antiquity ; but it was formed by them into this standard.' Of course," adds Sten- house, " we must believe it to be of Gaelic extrac- tion ; but the Gaelic title will no<t do : it is evi- dently a barbarous translation of ' Willie's Shantrews.' The word Shan is a common Scottish adjective signifying poor or shabby, and shantreivs, in the same dialect, literally means shabby or poor-looking trousers, a name by which the tune has been known .... at all our dancing schools for many generations."

See also Chambers's ' Songs of Scotland prior to Burns,' 1880, p. 78. W. SCOTT.

A REPUBLICAN SON OF Louis XV. : O- MORPHI (11 S. i. 225). MB. AXON in his reference to the ' Memoires de Jacques Casanova ' omits the number of the volume and the edition. In the Brussels (Rozez) edition the reference is vol. ii. chap. xiv. ; in the Paris (Gamier) it is vol. ii. chap. xvii.

Casanova does not give the name of the beautiful O-Morphi's husband, but merely speaks of him as a Breton officer. He gives a very different account of her names from that which appears at 7 S. xi. 429. He says that her Christian name was Helene, and that he himself invented the name O-Morphi, which, according to him, Louis XV. always ii QO ri jje says that the girl's (elder) sister

used.

was a Flemish actress of Greek origin named Morphi. Casanova had Helene's portrait painted, and wrote under it " O -Morphi," about which he says that the word is not Homeric, but is none the less Greek, meaning 'beautiful." This was the portrait which down to the King by M. de Saint- Quintin.

There is a Modern Greek work 6'/>iopc/)o? (otherwise ^ et^opc^os), meaning " beautiful. !l Similarly o/xopia, " beauty."

I am informed by a friend who used to live in Cyprus that the adjective is fre- quently pronounced as though it began with

a instead of o. Casanova, serving in the Venetian army, passed some time in Corfu. See vol. i. chaps, xiv. xv. (both editions of the * Memoires l ), and the following chapter.

Although he perhaps learned but little of the language, o/xop0ry, as applied to a pretty woman, would probably soon come to his knowledge. At 7 S. xi. 302, 429, 430, the name appears in many forms " Morfil," " Morphy," " Morphise," and " O' Murphy "; but Casanova is so very precise in his statements, and gives so many particulars, that I am inclined to believe his story about the names and the events. He distinctly gives " Morphi " as the name of the actress sister, and tells how the King at his first interview asked O -Morphi whether she was Greek. Casanova asserts that the actress was " de race Grecque."

ROBERT PIERPOINT.

RALPH AND HENRY THRALE (11 S. i. 229). Information as to Henry Thrale, with a not very pleasing view of his character, will be found in ' Autobiography, Letters, and Literary Remains of Mrs. Piozzi (Thrale),' edited by Abraham Hay ward, second edition, 2 vols., London, 1861. On the subject of the Thrale connexion with Offley see vol. i. p. 9, where Mrs. Thrale's marginal note on the account of her hus- band's family in Boswell's ' Johnson ' is quoted. In this after describing how Ed- mund Halsey, son to a miller at St. Albans, ran away to London with a few shillings in his pocket, was taken in as a " broomstick clerk " by Child at the Anchor Brewhouse, Southwark, and in course of time married his master's daughter and succeeded to the business she continues :

" Being now rich and prosperous, he turned his eyes homewards, where he learned that sister Sukey had married a hardworking man at Offley in Hertfordshire, and had many children. He sent for one of them to London (my Mr. Thrale's father) ; said he would make a man of him, and did so."

On p. 20 of vol. ii., where Henry Thrale appears as a suitor for her hand, she writes : " His father, he said, was born in our village at Offley, of mean parents, but had made a prodigious fortune, by his merits." Offley Place was the seat of Sir Thomas Salusbury, Mrs. Thrale's uncle. EDWARD BENSLY.

MOHAMMED AND THE MOUNTAIN (11 S. i. 89, 151, 231). As my purpose was simply to summarize the legend as it stands in one of the popular forms, I thought it un- necessary to add authorities. A familiar setting of the tradition, with the name of the